


these violent delights

by stillscape



Series: tumblr prompts collection [9]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Despite the tags and title this is mostly fluff, F/M, Mentions of Blood, Mentions of Violence, Mentions of drugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 04:49:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20237005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillscape/pseuds/stillscape
Summary: “Shades ofJane Eyre,” he muttered.“Agreed,” said a female voice in Jughead’s ear. “There’s even a madwoman in the attic.”Jughead spun around. Standing there was the spitting image of a modern-day Nancy Drew, though she at least looked to be his age, and not sixteen. She wore her blonde hair in a tight, smooth ponytail. She carried a reporter’s notebook and a pencil.Or:Five times paramedic!Jughead met crime reporter!Betty.





	these violent delights

**Author's Note:**

> "Write it as a five times fic," I said. "That'll keep you from spiraling out of control," I said. 
> 
> A companion piece (of sorts) to my cop!Jug and firefighter!Jug stories. Thanks to sully and skeptic, as ever.

  
  
  
  


**01.**

Jughead Jones had always preferred the graveyard shift. 

Actually, no. That was a lie. He didn’t prefer the graveyard shift. The graveyard shift was when you got called to patch up some of the worst parts of humanity. Drunk driving accidents happened more often at night, especially here in Riverdale, with its winding forest roads untroubled by streetlights. Nighttime was when idiots tried to rob convenience stores or Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe. Nighttime, too, was when the worst violence happened. Jughead wasn’t sure that this was the case everywhere in the world, but it was certainly the case in Riverdale, and Greendale, and Centreville, and all over the county. 

Once the sun dropped over the horizon, any tentative feelings of safety dissipated, like so much fog rising over the railroad tracks. Once the stars and the moon came out, so too did the gangs. 

That was why Jughead had volunteered to work the overnight shift since he’d been hired as a paramedic. Swept into his parents’ Toledo gang at fifteen—what else was he supposed to do, run away from home?—he’d seen violence enough growing up. Before he was even seventeen, he’d learned both how to inflict a near-deadly knife wound and how to suture one up. 

(Paramedics weren’t allowed to suture, technically speaking. But he hadn’t forgotten how to do it.) 

Riverdale was supposed to be a fresh start for him. He’d left that life behind. He never wanted to see it again. But many of his co-workers had never seen it at all. They might be able to handle it. You never knew how you’d react to violence until you were personally confronted by it. The idea that he might be able to spare some of those co-workers from ever having to find out seemed to Jughead to be an opportunity to atone for past sins.

The call came in just after midnight: a fire at the old Blossom estate. Three alarms. Possible victims. 

“Have you been to the Blossoms’ yet, Jug?” asked his partner, Archie, as their ambulance bounced down a road in desperate need of repaving. 

Archie was one of those innocents Jughead would have preferred to spare—or so Jughead first thought upon meeting him. He was an all-American quarterback in high school. He played the acoustic guitar. Then Jughead happened to ask why Archie had wanted to become a paramedic, and learned that it was because when _he_ was sixteen, around the time Jughead was threatening a rival gang leader at his mother’s behest, Archie had witnessed a masked gunman shoot his father in the chest. Emergency services in Riverdale then weren’t what they were now, and Archie, still lacking a driver’s license, had driven his dad to the emergency room while keeping enough pressure on the bullet wound to keep him from bleeding out. 

He was _good_, Archie was. But he was not naïve. And for whatever reason, he’d instantly adopted Jughead as a best friend. 

“Nope,” Jughead replied. 

“It’s amazing. We used to have the best high school parties there. It’s this creepy old Gothic mansion. There are greenhouses, maple syrup distillery, there’s an abandoned pig slaughterhouse somewhere in the back acreage…” 

“Pig slaughterhouse?” 

“Blossom Family Maple-Cured Hams. They were really good. But Cheryl’s a vegetarian, so she shut that down when she took over the family business.” 

They could see the fire now, smoke and flames raging mightily in a clearing up ahead. 

“Huh,” Jughead said. “What’d she do with the pigs?” 

“Oh, she turned them loose. They’re feral now. If you hear anything running around in the woods, that’s probably what it is.” 

“Feral pigs,” Jughead repeated. Riverdale was a weird, weird town. 

Archie left the flashing lights on as they pulled up to where the firefighter directed, but cut their siren. As he got out of the cab, Jughead let out a low whistle. 

“Shades of _Jane Eyre_,” he muttered. 

He’d been to plenty of house fires, but never one quite like this. Never one quite so large, and never one in which one of the apparent occupants of said home was attempting to prowl about the perimeter in a flowing white nightgown, holding a lit candelabra, and being forcibly restrained by several firefighters. She was obviously in need of psychological treatment, if not standard medical—but that would come in time, when the firefighters managed to wrestle her over to the ambulance. 

“Agreed,” said a female voice in Jughead’s ear. “There’s even a madwoman in the attic.” 

Jughead spun around. Standing there was the spitting image of a modern-day Nancy Drew, though she at least looked to be his age, and not sixteen. She wore her blonde hair in a tight, smooth ponytail. She carried a reporter’s notebook and a pencil. 

He fell in love right there on the spot. 

“Betty Smith, _Riverdale Register_,” she said, but when he stuck out his hand, she gave him a puzzled look instead of a handshake. “Uh, don’t you have a job to do?” 

Grateful that some combination of nighttime, flashing lights, and the roaring fire must be hiding his shameful blush, Jughead jogged around to the back of the ambulance and began helping Archie get things set up. The firefighters were rushing over with an ancient old woman in a wicker wheelchair, and another, much younger woman, with flaming red hair and a haughty expression. Grandmother and granddaughter, perhaps, and the crazy woman with the candelabra must be the mother. 

“Betty?” Archie asked, sounding incredulous. “What are you doing here? I didn’t think you’d ever come back.” 

She shrugged. “I’m just helping my mom for a little while. She needed me to work the crime beat.” 

Archie raised an eyebrow. “Really? You still want to deal with all that… stuff?” 

“You think this is a _crime_?” Jughead interrupted. “That woman’s running around with lit candles; odds are there were more inside that just got knocked over—what?” 

Betty and Archie were both looking at him as though he had a lot to learn. 

“The Blossoms have a family history of arson,” Betty explained, just as the woman in the nightgown broke free of her captors and ran _into_ the burning house. 

“_Sigh_,” said another, bored voice—the haughty young woman, finally arriving at the ambulance. She gestured at the ancient woman, who stared at Archie with blank, milky eyes. “Treat Nana first, obviously. I’ve not been so much as singed by a single spark. And I should see what was so important that Mumsy saw fit to re-enter Thornhill, I suppose.” 

“Jason? Is that you?” croaked the old lady, lifting a gnarled hand to Archie’s cheek. 

“Jason?” echoed Jughead. 

“No, Nana Blossom.” Archie began placing an oxygen mask around the woman’s perfectly coiffed bun. “It’s me, Archie Andrews.” 

“Jason was Cheryl’s twin. He died when we were in high school,” Betty explained conspiratorially, leaning her perfect lips entirely too close to Jughead’s ear as he wrapped Nana Blossom’s arm in a blood pressure cuff. “He was a redhead too.” 

“Am I the only person in Riverdale who didn’t grow up here?” he wondered aloud. 

“Yeah, probably,” Betty replied. “It’s that kind of place. No one ever moves in, and no one ever leaves.” 

“I moved in,” he countered. “And you…left? For a while?” 

This seemed to strike some sort of nerve. “Well, it’s always nice to see a new face, but I’d better get to work.” Betty turned away, squaring her shoulders. “Cheryl, do you suspect foul play? Can I get a quote for the paper?”

  
  
  
  


**02.**

Though he knew the thought was about as dark as this cloudless, moonless night, when Archie pulled their ambulance up to the curb, Jughead couldn’t help but lament the fact that being a paramedic meant you so very rarely got to see the action as it unfolded. 

“Oh, god,” Archie groaned. He cut the engine. “Now what?” 

“Huh?” 

“Betty?” Archie called. “Are you okay? What happened?” 

_Betty?_ This was a brick thrown through a floor-to-ceiling front window, and though he very much would have liked to have witnessed it for himself, it hardly seemed like the type of story that a local crime reporter would bother covering. 

But then he noticed the sign on the door, which remained intact: they were at the offices of the _Riverdale Register_. 

“Hi,” Betty said, stepping through the shattered window frame. Low-heeled suede boots crunched over the broken glass that littered the sidewalk, and a grimace distorted Betty’s lovely face. She had a blood-stained towel wrapped around her right hand, which was sensibly elevated above her heart as she applied pressure with the left. 

Archie winced. “You’re hurt.” 

“I’m fine. I just cut my hand.” Betty sounded more annoyed than hurt… but she still sounded hurt. “Arch, will you go deal with my mom? I can’t right now.” 

“Your mom still hates me.” 

“I know,” she said. “That’s what I’m counting on. Please, go annoy her just by existing.” 

Jughead peered through the window. In the back of the newspaper offices, he could see a middle-aged near-clone of Betty (or, no—Betty would be the near-clone) arguing with a dark-haired man in shirtsleeves and several cops. 

“Well, let Jug take a look at you, at least,” Archie said, before climbing through the window himself. 

“There’s a door, you know,” Jughead remarked as he led Betty to the back of the ambulance, even though climbing through a window did sound kind of fun to him. 

She sat where he indicated, and winced hard when he unwrapped the towel; whether it was from pain or just the sight of the slice across her palm, he couldn’t tell. 

“Please tell me this isn’t going to need stitches,” she said. “It’s my writing hand.” 

Though it was bleeding quite a bit, the wound seemed mostly superficial, and Jughead shook his head. “I think it’ll be fine with a good bandage. Let me just clean it first.” 

Betty nodded. She grimaced again as the antiseptic stung, but after that, she did not flinch. She simply watched him work, without complaint or comment. 

“What happened? I mean, aside from you obviously trying to clean up glass bare-handed. Which is never a good idea, by the way.” 

“I _know_ that. But a huge shard landed right in my lap, and it’s not like I keep leather gloves at my desk.” 

“Fair,” he conceded. 

“So my mom co-owns the paper with that guy inside, Marty Mantle. He’s—are you a football fan?” 

This question rattled Jughead far more than the sight of blood ever could. “Am I what?” 

“No? I guess not, then. Have you heard of Reggie Mantle?” 

This name did ring a bell. You heard a lot about your partner’s life when you spent lonely nights sitting in an ambulance. “Archie’s frenemy from high school? The one who made it all the way to the NFL?” 

“The very same,” Betty confirmed. “Also Marty’s son. Also just suspended from said NFL after his urine tested positive for fizzle rocks.” 

“Fizzle rocks,” he repeated. 

Betty rolled her eyes. “Don’t spread this around, but back in high school, Reggie used to deal to all the Northside kids. Color me not at all surprised to hear that he’s still using. So, Mom wants to run the story, and Marty doesn’t. They’ve been having quite the blowout over it—god knows why Marty’s fighting this so hard. It’s already all over ESPN, you know? Anyway, my mom decided her best rhetorical strategy was to throw a brick through the window at him.” 

He was still thinking about the fizzle rocks. “With her own daughter sitting right there?” 

“In her defense, I don’t think she could see me from where she was standing.” 

“That’s not much of a defense,” he said. “Are either she or Marty on fizzle rocks?” 

“I don’t think so,” Betty said, frowning. “Why? Why would you ask?” 

He shrugged, then went back to putting the final touches on his bandage. “No reason. Just seems like half this town’s using them. Even…” 

Jughead bit his tongue then, but it was too late. Betty’s normally wide, bright eyes had already narrowed. They were fixated on his lips, as though waiting for another clue to fall out. 

“I liked your article on the Blossom fire, by the way,” he said. “Very vivid, especially the part about Penelope running back out of the house with the family portrait. The Dorian Gray allusions—” 

“Did you drug-test the Blossoms?” 

They had, and Penelope Blossom, of all people, had tested positive for fizzle rocks. He couldn’t tell Betty that, though. For the first time in his life, Jughead hoped the pretty woman in front of him _wasn’t_ a fan of noirs. If she knew anything about femme fatales, well—one kiss, or even one look or one flash of leg, and he’d let anything spill. 

“Your hand’s done,” he said lamely. 

“You did,” she said, accurately reading his lack of response. “Penelope was positive, wasn’t she? Come on, Jughead.” Her voice was increasingly impatient. 

“Patient privacy is a thing, you know,” he said. “I happen to like my job. I don’t intend to be fired from it.” 

“How many fizzle rocks overdoses do you come across in a month?” she demanded. “A lot, right? Too many. Well—” Betty popped to her feet, then glanced around the side of the ambulance as though she thought someone might be spying on them. “Look. I can’t ask Archie to get involved with this, he’s too…well, he’s Archie. But the police aren’t doing jack shit about fizzle rocks, so I’m going to.” 

“You’re going to what, exactly?”

“I’m going to break the story,” she said. “Longform crime journalism. That’s what I want to do, not work for my mom’s paper in the town I swore I’d never come back to. But since I had to come back, I might as well do something useful while I’m stuck here. And—well, I could use sources, you know? People who can really see this town for what it is.” 

“And what is that?” 

“I think there’s a major fizzle rocks kingpin in the area, and I think it’s Penelope Blossom. I just have to prove it. Then she’ll be arrested, and this town can start to clean itself up again.” She looked him straight in the eyes, and gave him a smile that was somewhere between Lisa Fremont and Phyllis Dietrichson. “Jughead Jones, will you be my inside man? Or at least think about it.” 

Fumbling a bit with the awkward bandage on her hand, she retrieved a business card from the back pocket of her jeans and slipped it into the chest pocket of his shirt. She gave said chest pocket a little pat, and Jughead’s heart gave a stupidly large leap. 

Well, he supposed, it was certainly one way to get a girl’s number. 

He drove them back to the hospital; Archie was emotionally drained after dealing with Betty’s mother, who was uninjured but somehow more trouble than a whole building of injured people would have been. 

“Why’d Betty leave Riverdale and swear never to come back?” 

Archie gave him a funny look. “You don’t know?” he said. “I thought you were super into all that true crime stuff.” 

Not knowing something Archie thought he should was something Jughead found perversely annoying. “I don’t know what?” 

“That Betty’s last name isn’t really Smith. Or maybe it is now, but when we were kids, it was Cooper.” 

There was a horrible sinking feeling in Jughead’s chest. “So she’s married?” 

“Married? No,” Archie said. “Betty _Cooper_. Harold _Cooper_—you know, the Black Hood? He’s Betty’s father.” 

Jughead nearly drove the ambulance off the road. 

“Jug, watch out! You almost hit that feral pig.” 

“No,” Jughead protested. “He couldn’t be. The Black Hood operated in Vermont, not upstate New York.” 

“Yeah. We’re only a forty-minute drive from Vermont.”

“Shit,” Jughead muttered. He stared out the windshield, keeping his eyes on the road and his attention nearly anywhere but. “So Betty…” 

A book about Harold Cooper, the Black Hood, had been sitting on one bookshelf or another of Jughead’s since it was published when he was eighteen years old. The details of the Black Hood’s crimes were absurd. Straight-up Gothic horror, really. The emergency room doctor whose throat had been slit with his own scalpel. The high school girl who had been knifed backstage during a high school musical, pinning her still-bleeding corpse to the scenery. A man posing as his illegitimate biological son for unknown reasons, who’d been skewered to death with goddamn _goat horns_. 

Jughead couldn’t get enough of it. 

And the person who’d captured him—the person who put him away—was his own daughter. The book’s author had given her a pseudonym, since she was a minor at the time. Marie, it called her. 

Betty. It was Betty. 

He’d known Hal Cooper was from Riverdale; of course he had. Morbid or not, that was one of the reasons he’d decided to move here. Surely, a town that had been through something like _that_ would be willing to tolerate an ex-gang member trying to do something useful with his life. 

“After the trial, Betty—she had enough credits to graduate early. She split before senior year and said she’d never come back,” Archie said. “We grew up next door to each other, and we were always really good friends, so we kept in touch through college and stuff.” 

“Really good friends,” Jughead echoed. “Did you guys ever…”

Archie didn’t respond to the tentative question. He reached for his coffee mug. It wouldn’t matter if they had dated in high school. This was a small town, the kind where everyone dated everyone. And they clearly weren’t dating _now_. But… 

But he was curious. 

“Date,” he elaborated. 

For some reason, this made Archie spit lukewarm coffee all over the dashboard. “Date? Me and _Betty_? God, no.” 

“Really?” 

Archie loved women; this Jughead knew beyond a shadow of a doubt. Judging by Archie’s high school stories, this was not a recent development. Why hadn’t he dated Betty? 

Maybe she’d been unattractive in high school—or at least, not Archie’s type back then. Maybe she was one of those girls who underwent a magical transformation in college. Jughead doubted it, though. He couldn’t imagine her ever being anything less than stunning. 

“Okay, we kissed once, but it was—it was like a stress thing, I think? It was before we knew her dad was the Black Hood, and he was coming after her, and…I don’t know. It happened, and it was weird, and we never talked about it again.” 

There was a long, long pause. 

“Why’d you ask if Betty was married?” Archie wondered aloud, and not for the first time, Jughead wondered if his friend and partner was truly that thick-headed.

  
  
  
  


**03.**

The call came in just before dawn. A panicked passerby phoned in the accident; those involved in said accident never would have, not because they were incapacitated (although some of them were), but because they were rival gangs street racing for territory, which apparently was a thing that happened in Riverdale. In the middle of the night. On a dark, winding road. 

Jughead had _been_ in a gang. He’d fought for territory with his own two hands—and a switchblade, and brass knuckles. Street racing as a form of combat seemed ineffective. 

By the time he and Archie got to the site of the accident, some of the gang members had vanished, but quite a few were in the process of being arrested. 

“Boys,” called the town’s longtime sheriff, beckoning the two of them over to where he had several people braced against a police car. 

“You again,” said one of the men in handcuffs, an enormously tall dark-haired fellow in a leather jacket. He had a cut under one eye, but he seemed mostly unharmed at first glance. He spat at Archie’s feet. 

“What the hell, Sweet Pea?” Archie grumbled. “Jug, you do him. I’ll get to work on that Ghoulie.” 

The evening air was cool, bordering on chilly, but Jughead nevertheless removed his jacket before he got started, strategically pushing up the short sleeve of his uniform shirt just enough to give this Sweet Pea fellow a glimpse of the Toledo Serpents tattoo he still bore. Maybe it’d help. It sort of resembled both the tattoo on Sweet Pea’s neck and the patch on the back of his leather jacket. 

“Anything in particular hurt?” he asked, though he knew Sweet Pea would deny injury. 

Sweet Pea huffed, and jerked his chin at Jughead’s bicep. “You’re not a Serpent.” It was a challenge. Jughead knew better than to take the bait. 

“Not anymore, and not here,” he said simply. 

“Where the hell else would you be a Serpent?” 

“I’ve got to check you for a concussion,” he said. “Any headache, dizziness, nausea?” 

“Anything you can tell me about where the Ghoulies are getting their supplies these days?” 

Somehow, Jughead was not at all surprised to find Betty suddenly at his side, arriving out of nowhere with her ponytail shining in the dark and a reporter’s notebook clutched in her still-bandaged hand. How she’d known about the accident, he couldn’t say, but— 

Sweet Pea scoffed. “Like I’d tell _you_ anything, Cooper.” 

“Does _everyone_ in this town know each other?” Jughead wondered aloud.

“It’s Smith now. And we’ve never met,” Betty said impatiently. “One of my friends was dating a Serpent for a while, way back when. He told me a few things about the baby snakes. Sweet Pea’s always stood out in a crowd.” 

“Heard a fair few things about you, too, Blondie.” 

Sweet Pea was nearly an entire foot taller than Betty, and well-built on top of that. Sure, he was handcuffed, but Jughead wouldn’t have been terribly surprised if the other man could break the cuffs with a simple jerk of his arms, or if he could make a fair stab at killing them with the cuffs still on. Betty took no notice of this. She stood tall and proud next to Sweet Pea, not cowed in the slightest, jutting her chin forward. 

“If you’re referring to my father—”

“Shit, no.” 

“My mother, then?” Betty rolled her eyes. “Please. I don’t have the same prejudices against the Southside that she does.” 

“Alice Smith’s from the Southside,” Sweet Pea said, raising his eyebrows at Betty. “One of the few snakes to shed her skin and never grow it back. You know that?” 

“Oh, for god’s sake, Sweet Pea. Do you have any idea how big her tattoo is? I’ve always known she was a Serpent.” 

Jughead tried to imagine the Betty-clone he’d seen at the newspaper offices in a leather jacket like Sweet Pea’s, and decided that this was, in fact, very easy to do. 

“So what can you tell me about the Ghoulies?” Betty asked again. “I know the Serpents’ hiss is worse than their bite. You’re not dealing the hard stuff. So tell me what you know about who is.” 

“Your girlfriend’s persistent,” Sweet Pea told Jughead. 

Before either Jughead or Betty could issue a denial, a feral pig darted out of the woods and into the roadside clearing, brushing up against Jughead’s leg before it took off, squealing loudly, across the road. This drew the attention of everyone—the Ghoulies, who laughed; Archie, who furrowed his brow, and Sheriff Keller, who sighed deeply as he strode over to them. 

“Betty,” he said through gritted teeth. “What have I told you about poking your nose where it doesn’t belong?” 

She smiled politely. “It’s nice to see you too, Sheriff.” 

Keller turned to Jughead. “This one okay to be hauled off?” He didn’t wait for Jughead to confirm as much before he began leading Sweet Pea over to one of the cruisers. 

This left Jughead alone with Betty. 

“How’s that hand healing up?” he asked, just as Betty said, “You never called me.” 

They each took half a step back. The sun was just starting to peek over the horizon, casting light over Betty from head to toe. 

She looked exhausted. Dark circles bloomed under her eyes. Her form-fitting black jeans (and _what_ a form they fit) and her black flat-soled boots were both streaked with mud. The bandage on her hand, now a few days old, really needed changing. 

Jughead mentioned only this last part, which caused Betty to tilt her head to the side. 

“Are you offering to change it for me?” 

“Maybe,” Jughead said, as his heartbeat raced on its own accord. 

She chewed the inside of her lip for a few seconds, then held out the hand. 

“Not here,” he said. “Policy says I’ll have to bill your insurance for the gauze.” 

“Heaven forbid.” Her gaze narrowed thoughtfully. “What about the labor?” 

Jughead had never taken up wearing a watch, but there was one strapped to Betty’s left wrist, and he tried to get a good enough glance at it to read the time. Betty, noticing this, snatched her wrist away and read the watch herself. 

“It’s five-thirty. When’s your shift end? Half an hour?” 

“Yeah. Uh…” He swallowed, steeling himself. “Want to grab breakfast with me?” 

She broke out into a smile that was more golden than the morning sun. “It’s a date,” she said. “Meet me at Pop’s.” 

Jughead felt his eyebrows lift. “A _date_, eh?” He managed to resist adding _like, a **date** date?_, but the temptation remained. 

Betty closed the distance between them, stepping so near he could smell the forest on her. What had she been up to all night? And what was she up to now, he wondered, as she reached for his arm? 

She pushed up his shirtsleeve, revealing the snake tattoo that he sometimes thought he ought to get removed. 

“I want to know about this.” She traced her index finger lightly over the “S” shape of his double-headed snake, and Jughead shivered with pleasure at her touch. 

“Well—” 

“Actually, I just want to know more about you,” she added. “So yes. It’s a _date_.” 

Forty minutes later, in the parking lot at Pop’s, he wrapped a fresh bandage around Betty’s palm and she rewarded him with a soft, sweet kiss from her soft, sweet lips. 

“What’d I do to deserve that?” he asked, a smile fighting its way to his face despite his near-desperate attempt to play it cool. 

Betty shrugged, and slipped her hand into his. 

It was the best first date of Jughead’s life, and that was even before she ordered an extra side of bacon for the table and paid for his pancake combo, too.

  
  
  
  


** 04\. **

He knew he shouldn’t tell her. Legally speaking. But sometimes, you encountered a good that was greater than the law. Sometimes, laws were worth breaking. Sometimes, the official channels were worth circumventing. 

Sometimes, your girlfriend showed you pretty concrete evidence she’d uncovered that this _thing_, this drug thing she was investigating, went way beyond one kingpin—or queenpin, in this case, if Betty was right. Sometimes your girlfriend’s evidence demonstrated that the sheriff’s loyalty had been bought long ago, and that the reason fizzle rocks wouldn’t fizzle out had as much to do with him as it did the drug’s addictive qualities. 

Though they were a month into their relationship now, Jughead still felt strange referring to Betty as his girlfriend. Her kisses remained sweeter than Blossom Farms maple syrup, her attitude saltier than Papa Poutine’s _bacon americain_, and her body hotter than Pop Tate’s freshest coffee. And she was close—so close—to cracking this case. All she needed to do was find where they were manufacturing it. 

(He tried not to think about how things might change between them once she no longer required the use of his kitchen wall. He’d grown fond of the news clippings, photos, index cards, and red strings that he and Betty had tacked there, almost as fond as he was of Betty herself. Once her work was done, would she want to stay in Riverdale? Would she want to stay with _him_?) 

Since he typically worked overnights, they had a lot of early morning breakfast dates. They were supposed to have one after this shift ended. Regardless of how hungry he was at any given moment, Jughead knew he needed to cut it out with the food metaphors. 

He was starving right now, although his shift wasn’t due to end for another two hours. Bacon couldn’t come fast enough. But before he could eat, he and Archie had work to do. 

They drove to the edge of the Blossom family land holdings, where Archie parked the ambulance in front of a small, Victorian-style house that was simultaneously nondescript and foreboding. 

_Only in Riverdale_, Jughead thought, as they got out and began unloading the gear they needed—their usual kits, a gurney, an IV stand. _Only in Riverdale or a Hawthorne novel_. Somewhere overhead, a raven’s caw echoed, and he added Edgar Allen Poe to his mental list. 

“So I’m finally going to see the Maple Club,” Jughead said. He’d been hearing a lot about it lately, as he helped Betty assemble her case against the madam. It was a shame that there wouldn’t be time to snoop through the brothel’s nooks and crannies. 

“You say that like you think _I’ve_ seen it.” 

“Haven’t you?” 

“No! What makes you think I would—”

“Not like _that_,” Jughead amended; he did not, in fact, think Archie was the sort of person to frequent a brothel. “I just meant—you’ve lived in Riverdale your whole life; I figured you’d seen everything there was to see.” 

“Oh. Yeah, I guess I have seen pretty much all of it. Except the stuff on the Blossom land. Like, even the pig farm, even when we knew it was open because we all ate Blossom ham—no one ever _went_ there. They kept everything secret.” 

The mention of ham made Jughead’s stomach growl again. He could go for some ham right now. Ham, or pork chops, or a bacon cheeseburger… 

The decor inside the parlor was spectacular, but they raced through; there was no time to examine it. He and Archie had been called here for a drug overdose, and it was crucial that they get to the victim as quickly as possible. 

A tense, clipped voice rang across the corridor. “Took your time, didn’t you?” 

The 911 call had come in just ten minutes ago. They couldn’t have gotten here more quickly if they’d flown. 

Penelope Blossom was a small woman. She was capable of blending unassumingly into the shadows. She was also capable of projecting an imperious, dangerous air, like a younger Dowager Countess without the British accent. She was doing that now as she led them to where the overdose victim lay. It was impressive, really, the way she could look down her nose at Jughead and Archie when they were so much taller than she was. The fact that they were _behind_ her, and she wasn’t even looking at them, made the feat even more spectacular. 

She was dressed in head-to-toe Victorian regalia. That helped. 

When they got to the victim, Archie’s jaw dropped. 

“Collect yourselves, please,” Penelope ordered. “I’m counting on your discretion.” 

Emerging from the shadows to stand beside her, Sheriff Keller nodded. 

Jughead nearly choked, more at the fact that Keller was already there than at the absurd demand. “Are you kidding?” 

“Jones,” warned the sheriff. Keller had a way of looking down his nose at Jughead too, like he’d seen the snake tattoo and decided Jughead was either secretly a Serpent and therefore untrustworthy at best, or that he was an actual snake and therefore best run over in the driveway, just in case he was venomous. 

“That’s _Reggie Mantle_,” he said, as Archie began taking Reggie’s vital signs. “Obviously, we won’t go blabbing. We respect patient privacy. But something tells me you’re not going to be able to keep this under wraps.” 

He was right, of course. Alice Cooper was waiting for them when they arrived at Riverdale General, engaged in what looked to be another spectacular argument with Marty Mantle. Next to them were a woman Jughead took to be Reggie’s mother, and a small TV crew from God only knew where. 

When she realized who had gotten out of Reggie’s ambulance, Alice broke off her fight with Mantle. “Oh, it’s _you two_ again,” she said, sounding spectacularly disgruntled. “No comment, I suppose? I’ll have to try and pry one out of my daughter later, as usual?” 

“Now is not the time to disapprove of me dating Betty, Mrs. Cooper,” Jughead said. He helped Archie unload a still-unconscious Reggie and take him inside, and then he returned alone to move the ambulance. 

He began backing the ambulance into its usual parking spot. Like nearly everything else in Riverdale, the hospital parking lot abutted a forest—in this case, one owned by the Blossoms; the hospital had been built on land donated by the family back in the 1940s. As he checked his side mirrors to make sure the ambulance was aligned correctly, he saw one very short flash of light, immediately followed by three slightly longer flashes. 

“Weird,” he muttered to himself. There wasn’t much on hand he could easily use as a weapon, but he managed to find a large and heavy flashlight that he figured might double as a billy club. Then he stepped into the deep, dark woods behind the ambulance. 

He didn’t have to go far. “Jug, over here. It’s me.” 

“Betty?” He aimed the flashlight in the direction of her voice, and found her dressed in her nighttime snooping clothes, a black trench coat and jeans and (inexplicably) a black bobbed wig.

“Who else?” 

“What was that flashing light?” he said. “And what’s with the wig?” 

“I had to cover up my hair,” she said, as though this should have been obvious. “I couldn’t find a hat. And the flashes were Morse code. The letter J, for Jughead. I was signaling you. Do you not know Morse code?” 

He did not know Morse code, and found himself vaguely irritated that Betty seemed to think he should. “I wasn’t a Boy Scout, Betty.” 

“Anyway, let’s go,” Betty said, leading him further into the woods. 

After a minute or two, Jughead ventured to say, “I’m technically still on the clock, you know.” 

She waved a dismissive hand behind her, and he knew both what it meant and that she was right: in the unlikely event they got called back out, Archie would think of an excuse. 

“It’s not a far walk back to the brothel, and I want to—oh, here,” she added, reaching in one of her pockets. “I brought you a sandwich.” 

The sandwich was ham and cheese on white bread, with mayonnaise, iceberg lettuce, and a tomato slice—just the way Jughead liked it. He wanted to shove the whole thing in his mouth at once. He settled for a single, albeit very large, bite. 

“You’re a lifesaver, Betty Smith,” he told her, with his mouth full. He swallowed. “How’d you know I wanted a ham sandwich?” 

All of a sudden, Betty spun around, grabbed his face, and kissed him hard. “Jug, you’re a genius.” 

“I am?” 

“The ham!” Betty grabbed his hand and began leading him in a different direction. “Forget the brothel. I know where they’re making the drugs.” 

They went further and further into the woods. Jughead could hear Sweetwater River somewhere to his left, bubbling and rushing, barely audible under his own increasingly heavy breaths, but otherwise had no idea where they were. Perhaps Archie was right, he thought. Perhaps he _should_ spend more time at the gym, even if he’d half-jokingly mentioned the possibility to Betty in bed one night after Archie first brought it up, and she’d wrinkled her nose (adorably) and told him she liked him exactly as he was. 

Still, a little extra cardio couldn’t hurt. 

After nearly half an hour, Betty drew to a halt. Up ahead, Jughead could sense a clearing—and, strangely, lights. 

Once he caught his breath, the air seemed different. Something odd hung in it, thick and tinged with a metallic tang that seemed almost like—like old blood. 

Jughead thought of the ham sandwich still in his pocket, and felt vaguely nauseated. 

“The old Blossom slaughterhouse,” Betty explained, although he had figured this out by now. “That’s where Penelope’s been making the drugs. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner.” 

The slaughterhouse seemed abandoned now. But parked outside, they found a blue vintage Chevy Chevelle SS, painstakingly restored, bearing vanity tags that read REGGIE1. 

“Oh, ho,” Betty said, grabbing her cell phone to snap pictures. “The plot thickens.” 

“Hey.” 

“Hmm?” She looked back over her shoulder, and Jughead instantly felt bad for breaking her concentration. He had to _know_, though. 

“When all this is over, when you’ve broken the story—” 

“When _we’ve_ broken the story,” she said firmly. 

“When the story’s been broken, then. When this investigation is over, what happens to us?” 

Betty stepped back, confused. “What do you mean?” 

“You said you were only writing this story because you got stuck coming back to Riverdale. So what happens when it’s done? What happens when you’re not stuck here anymore?” 

She sighed deeply, and much to Jughead’s surprise, a look of guilt crossed her face. “I didn’t get stuck coming back here. I—I _wanted_ to come back. I wanted to face the demons my father left me. But I spent so long swearing I’d never set foot in this town again. It was just easier to tell people my mom needed me to work for the _Register_ for a little while.” 

“So are you going to leave?” 

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe, someday. But not for now.” 

“And once the investigation is over, and you don’t need an inside source anymore…” 

The guilty expression fell clean away, and was replaced by one of concern; this, in turn, was quickly replaced by outrage. 

“Jug. Oh, my god. Do you really think I’m dating you to _get information_?” 

He didn’t. Or did he? No. She enjoyed his company. She thought he was good in bed. He knew that. 

But still…still, something tugged at Jughead’s insides, dragging his guts down nearly to his shoes. 

“You’ve got it backwards,” she said. “I asked you to be my inside source because I wanted an excuse to go out with you. Archie told me you were into all that true crime stuff.” 

“You talked to Archie about—”

“He didn’t realize my intentions. It was after I gave my card, even. He just came over to apologize because he felt bad that he told you who my father was. I asked him a few questions, that’s all.” 

She shrugged one shoulder, giving Jughead a flirtatious little smile, and his insides rebounded so hard that he was nearly lifted from his feet. 

“So I’m not going anywhere, Jughead Jones, and I hope you’re not either,” she concluded. 

He thought about all of this for a moment. 

“You have some _really_ weird ideas about romance,” he told her. 

She grinned at him. “You love them,” she countered. “And I love you.”

  
  
  
  


**05\. **

Sweeping changes had hit Riverdale in the wake of Betty’s article, which—in the end—had traced the corruption of the fizzle rocks trade all the way to the top. Penelope Blossom was in jail, naturally, her daughter refusing to dip into the family fortune to bribe the courts, or even to hire a really good lawyer. Sheriff Keller was out of office, replaced by a large fellow by the name of Moose Mason. So too was the previous mayor, whom Betty had discovered was having an extramarital affair with Keller. 

“This is good,” Betty kept saying. “This is amazing, actually. I knew my article would have reach, but I didn’t think it would make _this_ much of an impact.”

“You broke a story about a local drug ring that went all the way up to the NFL,” Jughead reminded her, because that was where things had truly ended—with Reggie Mantle, dealing fizzle rocks to some of the wealthiest athletes in America. 

(Reggie, in the end, faced very few lasting consequences. He’d been to a fancy drug rehab, served a suspension, and was already under contract for the next football season. This annoyed Jughead—athlete privilege, rearing its ugly head in a way he’d assumed he would never have to deal with after high school.) 

Even the Serpents were under new leadership after their previous head, a grizzled old bastard named Tall Boy, turned out to be secretly working with the Ghoulies. A tiny, pink-haired woman named Toni led the gang now. She frightened Jughead more than Sweet Pea ever had. 

For reasons he did not fully understand, beyond the fact that he rented in Sunnyside Trailer Park and was therefore considered a Southsider, Jughead had been given an honorary Southside Serpents jacket for his role in cleaning out the gang. It hung in his closet next to the Toledo Serpents jacket he’d brought along as a tangible reminder of the past he was trying to escape. Perhaps one never could escape one’s past. Not truly. 

One could forge a new future, though. The jacket he wore now, as he and Archie waited in a visible-but-unobtrusive spot behind the temporary stage that had been set up outside City Hall, was the navy blue one with reflective tape trim, a paramedic’s patch on the shoulder, and “Jones” embroidered above the breast pocket. 

There was a polite smattering of applause as Betty concluded the introductory remarks she was giving, and a louder one as Fred Andrews stepped to the microphone. 

“Feels weird to be working during the day, doesn’t it?” he asked Archie, once Archie’s wolf-whistle concluded. 

Archie chuckled. “Sorry I messed up your sleep schedule this week, Jug.” 

“Don’t be. You couldn’t miss this.” He gestured at the stage. “How often does your dad become the mayor?” 

Fred began delivering his own speech. It wasn’t bad by any means. But Jughead had eyes only for the blonde woman who stood behind him. 

After Fred was fully sworn in and the Riverdale High marching band had broken into what Jughead _thought_ might be a cover of “Born to Run,” he slipped away from the ambulance. With the fizzle rocks gone, and the Serpents back to their previous money-making exploits of small-time weed dealing, running a (somehow legal) dive bar, and giving unhygienic tattoos, Riverdale felt safe and secure. The worst that could happen at this inauguration was sunburn, or perhaps a sprained ankle, and Archie could handle that on his own. 

Inside the breast pocket labeled “Jones” was a small velvet box. Something inside the box rattled and thumped with Jughead’s increasingly erratic heartbeat. 

He found Betty without too much trouble. She was deep in conversation with a petite brunette Jughead didn’t know, so deep that she didn’t even realize he was there until he tapped her on the shoulder. 

“Juggie,” she said. “Hi. I want you to meet someone.” 

Jughead didn’t want to meet anyone. He wanted to get Betty somewhere private. Until, that was, the brunette stuck out her hand—and a business card—to him. 

“Veronica Lodge, Lodge Publishing House.” She scanned Jughead from top to bottom. “Your beau, Ms. Smith?” 

“This is Jughead Jones. He’s my partner in crime.” 

“Crime_fighting_,” Jughead clarified. 

“I was just talking to Betty about our interest in having her expand her article into a book,” said Veronica Lodge. “I’d love to discuss things over lunch. Where does one go in this charming little hamlet?” 

“Pop’s,” Betty said at once. “Jug, you’re off soon, right? Can you meet us there when you’re done?” 

He nodded, taking a deep breath as he did so. A potential book contract was a big deal. The engagement ring in his breast pocket could wait, even if he didn’t want it to. It could wait until tonight, or tomorrow. It could wait until Betty’s book came out, for that matter. He didn’t need a ring to prove he loved her. 

Just then, there was a huge shout and several equally loud, inhuman squeals from the crowd. Jughead’s walkie-talkie came on, and Archie’s voice rang from it. 

“Get back here, Jug,” he ordered. “It’s the pigs. The pigs are—” Archie’s words ended in a mangled burst of static. 

“The _pigs_?” Veronica queried. “Everything that’s happened in this town, and no one thought to do anything about those feral pigs?” 

Betty gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “Go,” she said, and so he did.

  
  
  
  


(fin)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I'd love to know your thoughts, when you have a moment.


End file.
